The Zenith Read online

  “Explain things to the Old Man!”

  Vu dropped the cup of coffee and sprang up. An anger burned away inside his body, spread to his veins, pulled at all his muscles, and tightly squeezed his heart. He suddenly found himself shaking, his voice also shaking accordingly.

  “What are you saying? For me to tell the Old Man what to do?”

  “No…No…I apologize.”

  Sau also jumped up and he suddenly stuttered, out of some confusion:

  “I spoke badly…I forgot the right words…I sincerely apologize to you. But Brother Ba said, at this time, you are the one closest to the Old Man, the one who can sway him.”

  “I am not the only one, the whole people are close to him. That’s the honest truth. If all of you have forgotten that, then I want to remind you.”

  “I know! I know!” Sau replied, and all of a sudden his lips turned white, the drops of coffee forming clear brown spots on them as he drank.

  “I am sorry I used the wrong words. This happens to lots of other people as well, because we are just Party cadres, not thinkers or writers.”

  “What do thinkers and writers have to do with this? They’re just clowns who dance around in roles written out for them,” Vu shouted inwardly, wanting to spit this out into Sau’s face, but an intuition about the need to be moderate stopped him. Pretending not to pay any attention to what Sau had said, Vu lifted his coffee cup and sipped to the last drop. Then, as if he had regained his equilibrium, Sau cleared his voice and said:

  “The truth is, I am thoughtless sometimes because I am too busy. I keep thinking that the Old Man is convalescing, so it’s best to let him rest. Besides, at the moment all helicopter units are activated for combat duty. The Old Man needs to be understanding toward us. The country is at war.”

  Vu looked straight into his face: “You really think that I can tell the Old Man what you told me earlier? Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Oh, no! I don’t want to say that you must report back to him those naked concerns just like that, but in a different way and with different words.”

  “With more honeyed words, more polished words? Is that what you mean? I am like the rest of you, not a writer.”

  “Talking with you is damn hard. You intentionally don’t want to understand. It is clear that the Old Man is fond of you and trusts you more than the rest of us. Once people like and trust each other, they become more sympathetic. The war is getting tense; we have to draft all soldiers and enlist the entire people. The Old Man needs to rest, to take care of his health, so that he can receive delegations of heroic soldiers returning from battles. No one can do this except the Old Man.”

  “I’m not clear if I really have the honor of being loved and trusted by the Old Man as you said, but the truth is, besides him, nobody can do it. That’s the plain truth; even the blind can see it. If this were not the plain truth, your grave would be green with grass. And not only yours.”

  Vu laughed silently in his stomach: “You really are an honest fellow sometimes, Vu. Either that or you are a second class actor.”

  Lifting his empty coffee cup, Vu tilted his head and slowly said:

  “You run the Party’s organizational machine; you know the personal history of each person like the back of your hand; you should know very well that before I joined the revolution, I had been well educated. My ancestors taught me that whenever someone truly cares for you, you must respond with fundamental trust and with loyalty. If the Old Man likes me, I cannot reciprocate like a thief or a traitor.”

  Sau laughed, even though only faintly: “Oh, for sure you are a stickler for words.”

  That said, he abruptly got up as if a scorpion had bit his butt and started pacing with big steps in the room. Like a mirror the glassy tiles reflected his tall and hefty image. His shoes were polished to a shine. Vu had the impression that Sau listened carefully to the knocking sound of his heels on the floor, as if he were counting each footstep…One of Vu’s colleagues with the same rank had once told him that in a meeting with Sau, he had let Vu’s colleague sit tight in a chair for an entire half hour, while he circled around and around without seeming tired, like a salesman showing off a new style of shoes.

  Vu thought: “You don’t have the smarts to understand that all tricks grow tiresome if overperformed. All contrived threats from literature and the arts need to change.”

  Looking him over from head to feet, Vu said:

  “You appear still quite limber. You can still serve the ladies for a long while…”

  Looking at Vu’s playful eyes, Sau realized that he had made a wrong move. His face hardened, but he smiled and sat down in front of Vu, stretching his arms behind the armchair, as if his recent display was only part of his early morning exercise, a habit to invigorate the start of day for those who must rub the seat of their pants on office chairs.

  “I thank you; thanks to heaven my machinery still works well. That’s without using herbal medicine.”

  Then, as if to avoid a blow from Vu, he suddenly cried out as if he had just remembered something important:

  “Damn, I’ve been so busy lately, I forgot to call the Old Man. And you?”

  “The Old Man has not called me for a long time as well,” Vu replied coldly.

  Sau rushed to say:

  “If so, I will arrange for you to visit him. Every now and then, it’s good to go back and visit the mountains.”

  “It’s up to you,” Vu answered summarily and stood up.

  At the same instant Sau, too, jumped up, quickly like a cat, to grab Vu’s arms tightly:

  “Let me phone to have them make arrangements. You can leave tomorrow.”

  That’s why Vu is here, at the domestic airport reserved for the air force, right at seven o’clock in the morning. Now, seated, he drinks his tea and stares at the bloated fog on the other side of Dinh Cong Lake. Waiting.

  5

  Since waking up, the president has stared into the east, waiting for the sun to rise. But white clouds cover all four directions.

  The clouds submerge the mountaintops in a vast white ocean. From the crevasses to the deep ravines, the watery mist curls upward like smoke, a kind of wet, cold smoke infused with the smell of forest tree and the fragrance of wildflowers. Those gigantic moving mists look like blind dragons feeling their way toward an unknown destination. Those dragons at times crawl across the rows of mountains by stretching out their strange bodies, at times crunch together and pile up in the valleys, forming images of fighting monsters. The sky has no horizon; unseen are the swaths of forests, high or low, over three ridges of mountains. Even the temple garden is immersed in fog. The white mist hovers just outside the window of his room.

  Seated and looking at the sea of fog, the president puts a finger on his pulse and counts…ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven…the numbers jump without stopping. At this age, it’s hard to master one’s body. The president knows he is waiting for one person, and the apprehension keeps coming on even if he does not want it to:

  “Why, for no reason, am I in this awkward situation? A few years ago, everything was different…”

  He wonders but knows he has no answer.

  About five or six years earlier, he had thought that all things were settled. The chess game was over. The old gown wasn’t even in the trunk but had been burned up. All the pictures, too, had turned into ashes to be mixed with dust. Even with all that, still his heart is beating hard.

  He thinks to himself: “Whatever; from every perspective there is no way to salvation. Once the path has become entangled with thorny vines and the well has been filled in, no longer is there any reflection off the water in which to look for a vision of the one who was…” But all of a sudden, an opposing voice speaks out in his soul:

  “It was a wrong move. It was the most humiliating move that could happen in the life of a person, especially for a man.”

  The president sighs. “I had no other choice.”

  The opposing voice says: “I
t was not that you didn’t have an alternative way. The problem was that you didn’t have the courage to choose another path.”

  He replies: “But now, one door has closed. What has passed is over and done with.”

  His mysterious opponent bursts into despising laughter: “Everything is not finished as you imagine. Every failure always brings along consequences that the loser cannot fully measure. This is a warning from me to you!”

  The clouds have not dissipated.

  “Why so much fog this morning?”

  Unable to stay seated, feeling half paralyzed and half anxious as if he were perched on charcoal, the president stands up. As soon as he puts his feet down on the steps, the chubby soldier rushes in from the temple patio and stops him:

  “The fog is very bad for you; please stay inside.”

  “I’ve sat here since this morning.”

  “Please wait a few moments, when the fog clears you can go out to the patio.”

  “Did you see the abbess and her attendant?…One is seven years older than I am and the other is a weak woman. Both have been out on the patio since early morning; they didn’t wait for the sun to be over the mountains.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Let me go out for a while for some fresh air. Staying in the room too long, I will suffocate from sadness and my limbs will be paralyzed.”

  “Sir…”

  But he has forcefully brushed the soldier aside and decisively stepped down onto the patio. There by the cherry garden he stands fixed like a stone. The fog comes over his face cold and wet, with a faint and fresh smell of the mountains. In the main temple, the candles flicker, the sound of the wooden gong mixes with the normal chanting of prayers, a kind of music that has become familiar to him. Every so often when the prayer chanting stops, the dripping sound of dew on the tile roof is clearly heard, a mossy roof that has turned blackish. With time, the wooden door frame has also taken on a darker shade. In this desolate and enchanting setting, the light from the candles grows more iridescent and vibrant.

  “Oh! The light of a fire…Why is it like firelight?”

  His heart breaks with a savage cry. The candle flames in the pagoda remind him of another flame, years back in the deep forests of the north…the distant flame of the maquis…flames that danced, that popped and exploded like so many eggplant and mustard flowers. A huge house, with strings of multicolored paper flowers cut by the clumsy hands of kids who hung them on the pillars. Spaced among the flowers were sheets of glistening gold paper. He knew well that in order to have those glistening sheets, for an entire year the young man in charge of the youths had had to collect and save the wrapping paper from his cigarette packs, the sole luxury he allowed himself.

  He remembers as if all the youthful faces illuminated that night by the flames were shining bright with happiness.

  But, what year was it really? It couldn’t be the year Binh Tuat (1946), because that year the resistance movement had taken shape, material requirements were mostly in place, even the printing plant for making Blue Buffalo notes was up and running. It must have been Dinh Hoi (1947). Yes indeed, the year Dinh Hoi.

  One afternoon, at approximately three thirty or close to four, judging by the slant of the sun’s rays through the leaves, he had had his head bent down in reading a document when he suddenly heard continuous chattering. When he looked up, he saw the chief office administrator smiling broadly:

  “Mr. President, in a little while please join our celebration.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Don’t you remember that we are still celebrating the Children’s Festival?”

  He was briefly surprised and said: “I thought I had done this and had distributed candies to the children.”

  “Mr. President, you did celebrate and distribute gifts to children from two to ten years old. But today it’s the turn of older children, those over ten, especially the young cadets from fifteen to seventeen who study together to prepare for travel to friendly countries.”

  “Ah, is that so?” he replied, then thought of the two thick piles of documents waiting for him on the shelves.

  “I still have so much work.”

  “May I report that those youth are eagerly waiting for you. They have practiced their songs and dances for a month to welcome this day of celebration. Should you not come, I am afraid…”

  “Why didn’t you organize it all in one day?”

  “If we did, it would be too crowded, the auditorium would not hold everyone. The other problem was that the other day the organizers did not have enough candies. We had therefore to split into two sessions.”

  After he finished talking, he smiled broadly, showing off his teeth, uneven and tainted the color of dirt from smoking pipes. Looking at him, the president laughed:

  “Fine. I will work a little more. When it’s time you come and get me.”

  Then he bent over and continued reading documents, completely calm. He had had no idea that fate was waiting for him underneath the pillars of his plank house.

  “Love, when will we see each other again…”

  The familiar song from the doctor again comes into his mind, like the electric prod that jabs at his heart. Pain spreads all over his body. He feels as if not only his heart is being crushed but that every cell in his body is being crushed as well. He suddenly thinks of that picture of Cupid, the blindfolded child with wings. The image brings on goose bumps and shivers: “Who knows who in this world will be your love? Who knows when fate’s hammer will break open your heart?”

  On that night long ago when his chief of staff had come to pick him up, he had still tried to finish the report. Neatly putting away the pile of documents, he had walked to the door. But when he put his foot on the stairs, he had turned around to cover the typewriter with a piece of cloth, fearing dust or some insect dropping from the roof might ruin his work machine. There was no rush in his movements, no stirring emotions in his heart. He had executed each movement with the self-awareness and calm necessary to his status—the leader of a country at war.

  The chief of staff had waited for him at the foot of the stairs to take him to where all the sections camped in common. The women’s section, the youth section, the National Salvation children, the Democratic Party, the Socialist Party, the Agricultural Society…All were arranged into one assembly. The zone for families was also nearby, the area of spouses and children of high-ranking cadres who participated in the resistance while tending to domestic duties. The camp was away from his house across a valley with a stream. By the time the president and his guide reached the valley, it was pitch dark. The chief of staff had swung back and forth a flashlight wrapped in thick cloth, exposing a pinhead of light only the size of a firefly. The valley lacked cover from tall trees. The trees bordering the trail were conifers or narrow-leaved, not providing enough protection against curious eyes in spy planes above. To compensate, there were many wild fireflies, and patches of phosphorus from decaying wood shone like a guiding light for the mountain god or ceremonial lanterns for forest spirits.

  They had to rely on such natural lights to walk. In about thirty minutes, they came to the stream. After crossing it, only a short descent remained until they arrived at the encampment. He asked the chief of staff:

  “Last time I told you what you need to do when you cross a stream. Do you still remember?”

  “Mr. President, you said…that…that…” He chewed on his words between his teeth. It made the president laugh.

  “I reminded you to pee on both feet before you cross. That’s the old way to prevent arthritis which I once learned. Your generation is still young and doesn’t know the laws of heaven. You all take your health for granted. But health is the big asset which we all need to preserve.”

  “Mr. President, because my brain is thick, I learn now but forget later.”

  “It’s not a question of education: it’s not a lack of intelligence but of taking precautions.”

  The chief of staff smil
ed, then stepped rearward behind him, and put into practice what he had just learned. Hearing a loud sound of splashing urine, the president had a quick thought:

  “For sure, he is healthy. Youth really is a time of paradise.”

  It took them a while to feel their way across the stream, because the bottom was quite slippery, though the water was not that deep. The rocks were not sharp but the big ones here and there were quite mossy; one needed only a small false step to fall down. Having to go to the clinic was a real bother, especially in the deep mountains and forests, where not all equipment and medicines were available. This very real worry prompted him to always remind himself and others:

  “This war is in a very difficult phase. We all must take care of our health. In other words, we have no right to get sick. Clinics and medicines should be reserved for wounded soldiers. Caring for your health to the utmost is discipline; it is the spirit of responsibility to the nation as well as to our own selves.”

  In the middle of the stream, the chief of staff suddenly grabbed him:

  “This spot is very slippery, let me hold your hand and lead the way.”

  “Thank you, but I have passed the most dangerous spots.”

  “Do you find the water too cold?”

  “Cold or not, we are close to the bank.”

  The president smiled and said: “Next time, if you mean well, you should ask to carry me before I put my feet in the water.”

  “Oh, oh, oh…”

  The young assistant had no way to answer so he cried out like a lamb.

  In the darkness, a large group of people straggled forward into view.

  “The president…the president has arrived…”

  “The president has arrived.”

  He raised his voice: “I am here!”

  The group cried out and ran down to the stream, where the water was only about a foot deep. Water splashed all over the president’s clothes. Lantern light glistened back and forth on the water, and arms grabbed his shoulders, his back. One touched his shirt, another his shoulder. The president recognized these people by the smell of their sweat and breath.